I don’t know about you guys, but I am glad my 40 hours without furniture is over. It was much harder than I thought it would be. Every time I thought about how hard it was, I tried to remember how hard it is for people in East Timor to make the best of things day by day.

When I got embarrassed sitting on the ground in public, I remembered how Lili told us she was embarrassed when the other kids teased her about how poor she was. When I woke up on the floor with a stiff back I remembered the tiny bamboo platform that Adriano, his mum, his little brother and sister, his older sister and her daughter sleep on every night. When I got tired from standing up for hours I remembered why it is I’m doing this and why all of us were doing the 40 Hour Famine: to stand up to poverty. To stand up for kids who have trouble standing up for themselves.

Well, the 40 Hour Famine itself is over and I can sit down again, but that doesn’t mean we can stop standing up to poverty. There’s still plenty of time to do some last minute fundraising and chase up all those people who said “I’ll donate later”. There’s time to ask a few more people for donations. You can email/Facebook/tweet your personal fundraising page a few more times too. Plus, now you can tell people about your 40 hours, how it made you feel and how you imagine it must be for people in East Timor. Every bit of money you raise over the next few days counts, because it’s a whole year to the next famine.

I can’t wait till next year’s famine. I’m already thinking about what I want to give up, how I’ll raise money and who I can get involved. Next year, I want the famine to be even bigger and better than this year. I want even more people to sign up, raise even more money and change even more lives.

I think it can happen because every person who did the famine this year, all of us, have a whole year to spread the message to others that poverty is real and the solutions are real too. Standing up to poverty isn’t just something you do for 40 hours. It’s something you do 365 days per year. By next year’s famine we’ll have had a whole year of extra conversations, thoughts, ideas and passion about fighting injustice, inequality and poverty. With your help, by next year’s famine we’ll be one year closer to the end of poverty.

That’s worth getting excited about.

-Will